First Author*

In January 2008, German publication Der Spiegel conducted an interview with Philip Rosedale, the creator of Web 2.0 application Second Life. Rosedale built his first computer as a child and went on to study physics. In 1995, he developed the video- conferencing system FreeVue, which was purchased by RealNetworks in 1996. There, he became vice president and chief technical officer, working on video streaming. In 1999, Rosedale founded Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world Second Life, which went online to the public in 2003. Second Life currently has more than 12 million registered users, but only an estimated 1.1 million are currently active within its virtual world.

In the interview, Rosedale discusses topics such as the application of business and marketing in Second Life, competition from similar programmes that have emerged over the last year, and future directions. Further, Rosedale postulates why the sudden burst of interest and growth when Second Life first came onto the scene has subsided. Rosedale’s most immediate goal? ‘To make Second Life crash less’ and to ‘make it more usable.’

A Nature Insight has recently been published on the topic of quantum coherence. Improvements in techniques to manipulate light and matter are facilitating exciting applications of quantum mechanics. Scientists from diverse areas of research are now seeking to harness and exploit quantum coherence and entanglement for quantum simulations and quantum information processing. In light of the new Large Hadron Collider, which will be ready for use at CERN in August, this Nature Insight features an editorial, progress report, and reviews describing the current state of research and implementation of quantum coherence across a range of scientific disciplines.

Elsevier, a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, has recently announced the publication of Bioscience Hypotheses, a new journal for radical hypotheses on topics throughout the life sciences.

The aim of the journal is to stimulate innovation by choosing work that is interesting and challenging, and provides a clear and coherent argument with a testable conclusion. Bioscience Hypotheses is edited by Dr William Bains, biotechnology entrepreneur and innovator, and visiting lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

The journal welcomes papers that:
• deliver new insight into the understanding or application of biology that could be of interest to a wide life science readership
• are clear, coherent, and lay out an argument that is easy to follow
• are not incompatible with known fact (although they may contest the interpretation of those facts)
• provide an interpretation, hypothesis or solution that is testable.

Papers that do not provide a means of testing their conclusion, or differentiating their conclusion from other explanations, will be rejected. Papers that provide some preliminary data (itself perhaps not sufficiently robust to be published as an independent paper, but nevertheless rigorously collected) will be welcomed. However, preliminary data are not a requirement for publication, and Bioscience Hypotheses is not a forum for new experimental results unless they are supporting a broader theoretical structure.

Papers are not subject to standard peer review, but are selected by the Editor on the basis of the criteria laid out above. The journal explicitly does not publish papers addressing medical issues, which should continue to be directed to the sister journal Medical Hypotheses.

Stevan Harnad’s blog. Open Access Archivangelism, has posted a very useful Open Access primer to give the uninitiated a detailed introduction into what OA publishing entails, the issues that it faces, and some of the movements to implement OA in a more widespread fashion. First Author would definitely recommend looking into this site!

A number of intriguing business and technology events will be held in Oxford in June.

First, the Oxford Internet Institute is hosting a forum entitled Cyberspace: its protocols and public international law, given by Henrik Spang-Hanssen, a Researcher and Danish Supreme Court Lawyer. This event will be held on the 10th of June from 3.00 to 4.30 pm. If you would like to attend please email your name and affiliation, if any, to events@oii.ox.ac.uk

Later in the week, on June 12, the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics Special Lecture will be held in the James Martin 21st Century School. The lecture is entitled Unfinished business: money, ethics, and a better transplant system and will last from 2.00 until 3.30 pm. Timothy Murphy, Professor of Philosophy in the Biomedical Sciences Department of Medical Education, University of Illinois College of Medicine will be speaking, and has provided the following abstract:

Transplant policy in the United States relies on volunteers for donation, both living and dead. This approach cannot meet the increasing demand for transplantable organs. Novel approaches that work within a system of volunteers are unlikely to succeed either. In this special lecture, hosted by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, the ethics of alternative systems are explored practically and philosophically.

Finally, Venturefest 2008 will be held at the Unipart Group of Companies, Unipart House, Cowley, Oxford, from 30 June – 01 July. Oxford University is a major sponsor of Venturefest, a free two-day networking forum providing vital support, advice and funding for early-stage and fast-growth business. The very exciting keynote speakers for this event will be Lord Sainsbury, reflecting on his recent report for HM Treasury, The Race to the Top. and Dr. Mike Grocott, leader of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition describing the research team’s endeavours to measure blood oxygen levels at 8400m.

GroupSpaces, an Oxford-based Web company which provides online tools for real-world groups has recently arrived back from Silicon Valley after being selected to attend WebMission 2008, a week-long trade mission for the UK’s twenty most promising Web companies

Founded by two Oxford students GroupSpaces.com arose from frustration at the multitude of different websites which clubs and societies at Oxford University were using to organise themselves online. GroupSpaces CEO David Langer said: ‘As a former president of two University societies I became increasingly annoyed with the mash-up of disconnected tools groups were using to manage themselves online – mailing lists on Yahoo! Groups, spreadsheets in Excel, events on Facebook, ancient websites – people were spending a disproportionate amount of time organising their groups across multiple platforms. There was a clear need to connect everything up and that’s what inspired us to create GroupSpaces.’

Chief Technical Officer Andrew Young, Vice President of Oxford Entrepreneurs and an experienced Web developer, added: ‘We both thought there must be a better way for groups to communicate with and manage their members’.

Young explained the unique solution provided by the Company: ‘GroupSpaces has created a free web-based service that solves all the problems of group managers with a combination of powerful, easy-to-use tools and an integrated portal. The online toolset is designed to fit in with each groups’ existing conventions, helping to establish efficient, robust procedures and facilitating collaboration between group members, managers and the wider world. Most groups have a common set of needs - communication channels, membership and database management, website provision and event organisation and promotion – GroupSpaces is designed to help with all of these.’

The team developed their initial ideas with the help of the Saïd Business School’s entrepreneurship activities including the Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s flagship Building a Business course for science and technology entrepreneurship, and the annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event where valuable contacts were made.

During Web Mission week in April this year they were able to take advantage of these contacts to set up meetings with some of the top Silicon Valley start-ups, from whom they received useful feedback. In addition, David and Andrew were invited for sessions with some leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley including a meeting with Oxford alum Michael Mortiz at Sequoia Capital where they were able to share the wisdom of the man who invested in and sat on the boards of Google and Yahoo!

In January 2008, GroupSpaces completed a 6-figure round of investment funding from a syndicate of experienced Angel Investors including London-based Avonmore Development - which made them the youngest Oxford University entrepreneurs to receive venture funding.

A pilot of GroupSpaces is currently in operation with 40,000 users and the product is being developed with the benefit of their live feedback. As well as large societies such as The Oxford Union, Oxford Entrepreneurs and Imperial Entrepreneurs, many of the Junior Common Rooms at Oxford Colleges are adopting GroupSpaces’ mailing list facilities. Oxford University Careers Service also benefits from the service. Former Director, Terry Dray said: ‘The innovative website offered by GroupSpaces has helped even more students to find out about our events and services. They are bridging the gap between university societies and graduate recruiters in a revolutionary manner.’

Adam O’Boyle, Sabbatical Officer for The Oxford Hub, an umbrella organisation for all the charities in Oxford, commented: ‘GroupSpaces have created all, and more, that we could have wanted for us and our member charities. Our students can now get on with actually running their groups.’

With more than 6,000 unique visits to the website every month, GroupSpaces has secured advertising contracts with over 50 blue-chip clients including IBM, BP, McKinsey & Company, Bain Capital, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and JPMorgan.

GroupSpaces is currently focused on rolling its online tools out to the 25,000 UK-based university clubs and societies, and will also be commencing a pilot with local groups outside the student market over the summer months.

US-based Nexo Systems estimates there to be over 100 million groups in the US alone, and GroupSpaces’ mission is to become the essential provider of online tools for real-world groups.

For further details about GroupSpaces visit www.groupspaces.com

There are over two hundred journals (in English) that are published in India and the subcontinent, in a range of academic disciplines. Many of these now have online versions. Scholars Without Borders has published a comprehensive list of these journals. Listed on the page are peer reviewed open access scholarly journals, in alphabetic order, and below that, subject-wise. The links take you directly to the journal websites, some of which require registration.

Very recently, Informatics, Bangalore launched Open J-gate, a portal for the efficient exploration and management of these journals: there are over 3000 open access journals available now via Open J-gate.

Nature.com was recognized this week as the Best Science Website of 2008 in the annual Webby awards. Nature Publishing Group’s website will receive its ‘Oscar of the Internet’ at the 12th Annual Webby Awards gala on 10 June in New York City.

The Webby Award winners are chosen by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), a global organization of industry experts and technology innovators. The winners were announced on the 6 May on the Webby Award website.
“Everyone at NPG is delighted that nature.com has been awarded a Webby, it’s a real validation of our efforts,” said Timo Hannay, Publishing Director of nature.com. “Our purpose as a publisher is to enable scientific and medical communication. If we can’t help researchers to make the most of the web - the most powerful communication medium ever - then we wouldn’t be doing our jobs. That’s why nature.com is central to NPG’s mission, and this welcome recognition will spur us on to try and achieve even more.”

According to the press release on Nature.com, the site serves almost 12 million visitors a month and is the gateway to NPG’s broad offering of publications and services, including access to all NPG publications including its flagship title Nature. Gateways and databases include the Nature Reports series. Through Nature.com, users can access news and features from Nature News and visit Naturejobs, NPG’s careers information and science recruitment website. Nature Network, NPG’s social networking service, is connecting scientists at a global and local level. The success of the weekly Nature Podcast has led to the construction of NPG’s own in-house podcast studio. Nature.com also hosts a number of NPG blogs, the preprint service Nature Precedings, and country-focussed portals such as Nature China and Nature India. Nature.com links to scientific experiments and conferences hosted on Second Nature, NPG’s three virtual islands in Second Life.

Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Websites. The 12th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has been outspoken about his view that his creation, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, should not be used in academic settings, especially by students writing papers. One reason is that any given entry “could change instantly and not have a final vetting process,” said Mr. Wales in an interview Thursday at a conference on the future of the Internet, held at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

But the popular encyclopedia may soon add a new feature that would allow Wikipedia entries to be “cited more comfortably” by students and professors, he said. The feature would allow a version of a Wikipedia article to be frozen and approved by experts.

The German-language edition of Wikipedia has recently been experimenting with a similar feature, though so far it has only used to flag entries as being free from vandalism rather than certified by content specialists. “Later, it could have a flag that says ‘This version is one that a committee has actually vetted,’” he said. “We’d still allow further editing, but if you really wanted a version that as of three months ago we had three Ph.D.‘s look at it, and they checked it off as being good, we may move in that direction.”

Mr. Wales stressed that no final decision has been made on whether or not to create such expert-approved versions of Wikipedia pages. “The software is evolving in a direction that would allow the community to come up with ways of doing that,” he said. Even so, he said, in most cases even an improved Wikipedia won’t be as appropriate for students as other sources. “What I always encourage students to do especially, is don’t think of Wikipedia as a source, think of Wikipedia as background knowledge.”

At 4 pm on Thursday, 17 April, the Oxford Department of Biochemistry will host its 10th annual Rodney Porter Memorial Lecture. This year, Professor Frances Ashcroft, of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, will discuss ‘Ion channels and diabetes: a rollercoaster ride’. The lecture will be held in the Martin Wood lecture theatre in the Department of Physics.

The Rodney Porter Memorial Lectures were inaugurated in 1998 as the premier event in the scientific calendar of the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, and originally took place in the lecture theatre of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

The lectures were named after Rodney Porter, Nobel Laureate 1972 and Head of the Department of Biochemistry 1967-1985, in recognition of his outstanding contributions both to scientific research and to Oxford University.

First Author will provide a summary of Prof Ashcroft’s lecture in the coming weeks!